Aviral Bhatnagar, M.B.A.

from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (2016)

Answered Nov 6, 2015 · Upvoted by Suhruta Kulkarni, studied at Indian Institute of Management,
Ahmedabad and Nilay Bang, PGP from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (2018)
I will go beyond the scope of the question by addressing other courses, as well as the
teaching style because I think it will help address the question better.

The IIM Ahmedabad teaching method is the case pedagogy. The method has case
discussions in class, supplemented by books as well as readings from various reputed
journals, books and online articles.

We are given case packs, that combine the cases with the required readings. Most
often, these readings are certain chapters from a book, which eliminates the necessity
of a book. The case pack is generally self sufficient, so it is rare that we will be given
an entire book to read.

The books are given additional to the case pack, with suggested readings from within
the book. Everyone is aware of exactly what will be taught on what day, so
preparation and participation in the class becomes more meaningful.

I will talk about the broad areas, and how much they are driven by cases vs.
readings/books. For the various areas i.e. economics, marketing, operations, finance
and strategy the books that we follow are:

Economics
The courses are entirely theory driven
 Economics : Paul Samuelson
 Macroeconomics : Errol D Souza
 Microeconomics : Paul Krugman
 Principles of Macroeconomics : Gregory Mankiw

Finance and Accounting

The courses are largely driven by books and less by cases
 Accounting : Anthony
 Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis : Horngren
 Investments : Bodie, Kane and Marcus
 Investment Valuation : Aswath Damodaran
 Options, Futures and Derivatives : Hull
 Principles of Corporate Finance : Brealey, Myers, Allen
 Trading and Exchanges : Haaris

Marketing and Business Research

The courses are largely driven by cases and less by books
 Business Research Methods : Cooper and Schindler
 Principles of Marketing : Philip Kotler

Operations Management
The courses are largely driven by cases and less by books
 Operations Management : Stevenson

Strategy
The courses are driven equally by cases and books
  Competitive Strategy : Porter
 HBR's 10 Must Reads : On Strategy
 Competing for the Future : Hamel, Prahalad

Others
 A First Course in Probability : Sheldon Ross
 Human Resource Management : Dressler
 Legal Aspects Of Business : Akhil Pathak

The picture below is me with my books and case mats (the spiral bound books) for
the first year. It's a tradition for "surviving the first year", posing with your books like
arm candy. For once I partook in it.

I also pretend like I read those. Maybe I did. One can never know. But, I can surely
say I learnt a lot, at least in theory (did you see the pun?).

PS : This took quite a while to compose because of linking. I will add more books as
they come to memory! I also bear no affiliation to Amazon, it was the only site
giving me relevant links for all the books.

Thanks for the A2A Dhritiman

Prescribed books in IIM Indore class of 2014:

Year I:
1)Introduction to Finance - Financial Management: Theory and Practice by Brigham
& Ehrhardt
2)Marketing - Marketing Management: A South Asian Perspective by Kotler, Keller,
Koshy & Jha
3)HR&OB - Behaviour in Organisations by Jerald Greenberg
4)Economics - Microeconomics by Pindyck & Rubinfeld
- Macroeconomics by Dornbusch, Fisher and Startz
5)Accounting - Accounting: Text & Cases by Anthony, Hawkins & Merchant
- Cost Accounting by Horngren
6)Strategic Management - Competitive Strategy by Michael E Porter (not prescribed
as such but a good read)

Year II: (based on my electives only)

1)Higher Finance (investments) - Investment Analysis and Portfolio Management by
Brown & Reilly
- Options, Futures and other Derivatives by J.C. Hull
2)Quantitative Finance - Paul Wilmott (not a prescribed book as per syllabus but
very helpful for preparation)
3)Business Analysis and Valuation - Damodaran on Valuation by Aswath Damodaran
(can be regarded as the leading Guru on the subject of valuation). Also refer to
valuation book from McKinsey.
4)Econometrics - Basic Econometrics by Damodaran Gujarati
5)Behavioural Finance - Beyond Greed and Fear by Hersh Shefrin

Do note that the real value out of these books can be best derived only under the
guidance of stellar professors and motivated colleagues in a typical B-school
classroom.
Also, you may have spotted the conspicuous absence of books on IT management and
operations management. That's because those were taught by notes provided by the
institute (yes, you don't have to buy all the books). In fact, most of these courses were
supplemented with HBR (Harvard Business Review) articles to provide dynamic
learning (books can only be static) and a tight grip on the application of theoretical
concepts to real-life business situations through case studies.

1. Accounting: Accounting by Anthony, Hawkins and Merchant

2. Corporate Finance by Charles Horngren
3. Human Resource Management by Gary Dessler and Biju Varkkey (Prof
Varkkey also teaches at IIM-A)
4. Legal Aspects of Business by Akhileshwar Pathak
5. Marketing by Kotler (this is the immediate reference for anyone who wants
to learn the basics of marketing)
a. We also used another textbook by Lamb, Hair, Sharma and McDaniel; The
third author, Dr Dheeraj Sharma, is a prof at IIM-A.
6. Microeconomics by Prof Satish Deodhar (yet another IIM-A prof)
a. Also used another book by Pindyck and Rubenfeld
7. A first course in Probability, Sheldon Ross
8. Academic Writing by Monippally and Pawar
These are the books which we used in first year alone (there are another couple of
books whose names elude me at the moment)

While this is definitely a long list of reading material, remember that in IIMs, more
learning happens in classrooms than outside, mainly due to the high level of
interaction between peers. As a result, while studying these textbooks will teach you
a lot, it will not be a full substitute for what you could learn in the two years